Organize Windows 8 Start Screen

Posted By
cynthia
On
August 8, 2013 @ 3:00 PM
In
Windows 8 |
No Comments

Once you start adding a lot of apps, your Windows 8 Start Screen can start looking a little crowded and without ye olde traditional Windows Start Menu, it can sometimes be hard to find things. Lets look at how we can categorize and straighten things up a little bit.

Let’s group apps together by category. That might make it a little easier to find things. If you’re using a touch screen device, select the app you want to move by pressing down and holding on the tile and pulling down slightly. If you’re using a mouse, just click and drag. We’re going to move each tile yuo select to the empty area at the far right of you Start Screen. When you drag the tile, it will appear translucent.

As you pull the individual tiles to the empty area, they should all group together. Here I’ve selected a Kindle app, The OverDrive app that allows me to read library books and my Adobe Reader to form a category of apps used for reading.

Now let’s get a clear overall view of that Metro/Modern screen to see where we want to place that particular group of apps. If you have a touch screen device, you can simply pinch the screen. If you have a keyboard and mouse set up, just hold down the Ctrl key and zoom out with your mouse wheel.

Then select your newly created group of tiles by pressing and pulling down slightly on them or by clicking with your mouse.

Drag your group to the desired position.

Now that we have the new group where we want it, we can think about naming it.

Right-click the group of tiles or pull down slightly on it and you’ll get the option to name the group.

I’m going to call this group Reading and group apps that involve reading there.